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by Jamshed Bokhari WASHINGTON (Islam Online) - Amnesty International on Tuesday issued a news release concerning abuses conducted by Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces when arresting and detaining individuals critical of the PA.
Those detained have either publicly criticized policies of the PA, the Middle East peace process or simply attended civil protests in areas under PA control. In its news release, Amnesty International emphasized that arrests and detainments of individuals usually occur outside the bounds of the legal process and that they are held without rights of visitation from family or counsel. The release cites several cases of prominent Palestinians, including the case of 'Abd al-Fattah Ghanem, the PA's presidential advisor on refugees, in which abuses such as arbitrary detention without warrants, refusal to comply with PA High Court of Justice rulings, and torture were chronicled. The detainees are at times informed that their detention comes on orders of PA President Yasser Arafat. In a conversation with Islam Online, Marty Rosenbluth, Amnesty International's country expert on Israel, the Occupied Territories and the Palestinian Authority, when asked whether Arafat possessed any knowledge concerning the situation of detainees said, "Because there are no charges, because there are no trials, its impossible to prove anything." Commenting specifically upon the activities of the security forces, Rosenbluth said, "They're just clearly acting in an extra-judicial fashion." "There's no procedures being followed, there's trials with no evidence, there's no hearing, there's nothing," commented Rosenbluth, adding that, "they're just arrested and detained and released …at the whim of the Authority, but since there's no trials, no hearing, how can you prove it?" "There's no due process whatsoever." Returning to Arafat's knowledge of detentions, Rosenbluth said, "Can it be absolutely proved 100% that Arafat knows about it? No. But these are what these individuals are told, and what their families are told." One of the central problems is that the PA's hierarchy of government accountability and organization is difficult to ascertain, but that "all the power, essentially, rests at the top." There are, "thirteen, or something, separate overlapping security agencies, all of whom answer only to Arafat. You don't have a clear line of command." Rosenbluth comments, "If Arafat is not responsible, then the question is: who is?" Rosenbluth will speak at the Palestinian Right of Return rally in Washington on September 16 on behalf of Amnesty International. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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